Windows 7 - External Hard Drives Stopped Being Found?
Aug 11, 2011
i've got 2 extra 1TB Seagate drive:[URL]I use these to make backups of my 3 hard drives (1 x SSD, 1 hybrid, and 1 SATA). I brought this new machine back in April, and it was working fine up until then. However, after trying to install some software (which didn't wanna install in the end anyway, due to it being rubbish!), I can now no longer see these drives on my PC The weird part too - is that my Win7 laptop has exactly the same issue ... but my brothers Vista laptop, and Win7 PC see them just fine!To start with I was thinking the drive had gone faulty (as it wasn't working on both my machines), but after testing it on my brothers stuff it prooved they are both working fine The USB's I'm using to connect it to are fine (They work for USB sticks and other USB kit) ... so I'm at a bit of a loss as to what it could be? The even weirder thing - is that my brothers 500gb external drive (can't remember what make that was, but its not Seagate) works just fine!Its driving me up the wall as I can't do my daily backups (I'm a software developer, so having a current backup of my PC incase of a fatal mess up with my system is vital for me)
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Mar 5, 2010
I've a dual boot configuration, XP Professional and Windows 7, where the 2 partitions/OS's are independent by use of a third-party (non-Windows) boot manager. My problem is that any external hard drive I use while booted into my Win 7 OS becomes write protected within a few minutes of installation; however, the same drive is fully usable--i.e., not write protected--if used while booted into my XP Pro OS.
I'm slowly losing my mind. I've checked the registry entry involving "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\StorageDevicePolicies" and it's as it should be. I've used the command prompt to check volume/disk attributes for the external drives and all of them are readonly clear. Literally, running Windows 7, within minutes of plugging in an otherwise not write protected USB external hard drive it becomes write protected. Every time.
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Jul 29, 2011
My external hard drives partitions are hidden in windows 7
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Dec 20, 2012
I have a new Dell with windows 7 and I have three external hard drives which I use on three other machines with xp pro one them. This machine will not open these drives and demands a format. They work perfect on my other machines
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Jun 14, 2012
I have a Windows 7 Laptop which i bought in January, at the same time i bought a WD 2TB external hard drive to back up all my files onto (last laptop broke and i lost everything so decided to keep everything off the laptop itself).
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Jul 10, 2012
I can only run one at a time instead of two. I would like to copy my 1.5tb over to my 2tb so I have a back up.
My laptop only holds 200GB of remaining data so I can't use that hard drive or I would.
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Nov 7, 2010
I have used "search" in microsoft before there was windows. From that time to 95, 98, xp, vista, but Windows 7 has me baffled. My Desktop pc died and I was well backed up but now I need to find some stuff in one of the drives. Windows support is useless. Give it more than one word and it is lost most of the time. When desktop comes up I am limited to all programs on the c drive of where to search. When I go to computer and select an external drive of course the search option disappears. I detest the standard layout as it is so different from all the other systems which were easy to use.
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May 6, 2011
I am currently running Ubuntu 11.04 on my HP (DV5 1110em) laptop from an external USB 2 Buffalo ministation hard drive, I have noticed my machine is equipped with an E-SATA port. Would using an e-sata external hard drive be any faster that the usb option ?.
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Jul 25, 2011
My HP netbook will not recognize my verbatium external hard drive, which is about 2 years old and which it recognized last week. Help. Do I need a driver for it? If so, where can I find one?
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Feb 10, 2012
my catalyst control centre has stopped working and l can't open my external hard drives.as it says they are empty and also my pictures.could someone please tell me how l can get the catalysr control centre to work again after it made my computer crash as well
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Sep 8, 2012
I have a LaCie external hard drive which works fine on other pc's running Windows 7 Ultimate, but on this one it is an "unknown device". I have tried it in different ports but with the same result. I've checked with Windows Compatability and the exact model is listed there as being compatible. I've been to the manufacturer's website but there are no drivers available.I have the same problem with any USB device I plug into any port. I have tried a complete Windows re-install from a different CD but it made no difference.The only USB devices that work are the keyboard and mouse.I have given the LaCie HD as an example because I am hoping that if I can get a specific device to work, I may be able to solve the problem with others.
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Dec 11, 2009
Does Windows 7 have a limit on how many USB external hard drives it will use? We have 5 WD My Book 1TB drives; 4 of them are recognized and work just fine with Windows 7 Home Premium 64 (which we recently did a clean install of to replace Vista Home Premium 64), but the 5th one doesn't show up with a drive letter (in Computer or Windows Explorer), even though it does show up in Control Panel.
The one we are having trouble with has had the latest firmware and WD SmartWare installed, and our computer has the most current Dell BIOS installed. We know the drive works, because we can plug it into our other computer which has Windows XP on it and it comes up with a drive letter just fine. Just wondering if there's a limit on how many of these you can use with Windows 7, since we had no problem with the drive until we installed the new OS.
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Jan 8, 2011
I bought a 2TB external hard drive (Western Digital) earlier this year on sale and for Christmas I got another one for redundancy (a back-up in case the one I have fails). My problem is that while my computer (a Dell Desktop purchased last year) will get a bit glitchy in picking up one (sometimes it won't recognize it but this is seldom), it will never recognize both at the same time. As a result, I have to add files (pictures, music, etc) to my external hard drives one at a time. I've checked all the USB ports with other hardware, and they all work - the only thing I can think of is that this is a Windows issue. I have both external hard drives assigned to different drive paths, so it's not a matter of that.
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Nov 23, 2011
I have three external drives, and every time I boot now, they show up as "found," as if I'd just put in a USB drive.....meaning I have to close them all each and every time. Not a serious issue, just an annoyance I'd like to avoid. How can I set it so that they are not "found" each time?
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Jan 8, 2012
My desktop does not detect and external hard drive that do not come with their own power supply. I have many externals that also plug into the wall and they are working fine; but whenever it is an external without a plug, i.e. the portable ones they are never found.
They do not show up in Computer Management, so it is not because I did not assign a letter to the drive.
I have tried various things, but I don't know what I should be testing for or looking for. These externals all work on other laptops and other desktops perfectly fine so it is not the externals. When they are plugged into my desktop, they light up normally like they should, but the desktop never detects them. I have tried these externals with the different USB cable I have on hand, but nothing seems to work. It doesn't matter which USB port I plug the device in, it still gives me no response.
I am running a i7 860 on a ASUS P7P55D Pro.
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Feb 19, 2012
I currently have 4 external hard drives connected to my computer. I have each of them set to sleep after an hour of inactivity. However, if I am using the computer, they stay asleep, until I delete something; anything. Any time I send something to the recycle bin, all four of my external hard drives wake up.
I would like for this not to happen. I already went to the Recycle Bin Properties and set each external hard drive to "Don't move files to the recycle bin. Remove files immediately when deleted" thinking that it would quit checking them for deleted files.
how to prevent these external hard drives from turning on when I delete files off of my computer. And just to be clear, I am NOT deleting files that are on the externals, they are files that are on the Computer.
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Nov 13, 2012
I recently noticed an issue when trying to connect to external hard drives. Initially noted that it wasn't showing in 'my computer' and so assumed I had driver issues and sought to update them from Dell's site. After doing so there was still no change, but noted that It was appearing in 'device manager'.I even tried updating the USB hubs from the Device Manager, and it states that they are all up-to-date with the correct drivers. Both external hard drives that i have tried has worked on other PC's so i assume that mine is the issue.
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Nov 6, 2011
I'm having an issue with trying to mount shares on my network to a WD Live player. Everything worked fine before reinstalling the OS on my computer. I am using Windows 7 Ultimate on a Dell XPS box. I have 2 external MY book 1TB drives with movies and music. The shares on my internal drives mount correctly through SSH to the WD Live but I get this error when trying to mount from the external drives:
Code: # xmount "//192.168.0.195/Films" "Films" cifs
mount: mounting \192.168.0.195Films on /tmp/media/usb/Films failed: Cannot allocate memory
xmount: xmount //192.168.0.195/Films Films cifs user=guest,iocharset=utf8,ro FAILED WTF?!? Also, I get this info when I run the command on SSH to see my shares:
[code]....
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Jul 25, 2011
I am running windows 7 64 bit, and have 4 external hard drives attached (not the best way, but until I can afford a server, the only way). I am using my computer as a media center only. When I wake my computer it can take a while (30 seconds to a minute), before I can use it, due to it starting up my external hard drives, but I have noticed a couple of times, my computer will wake without starting up my external hard drives (able to use media center within 2 seconds). Does anyone know if there is a way to get my computer to wake up without starting up the external hard drives every time?
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Aug 18, 2011
I plug quite a few different hard drives into my PC running windows 7 VIA a usb 3.0 Nexstar SATA adapter, normally just bare hard drives that need data backed up or moved, and as time goes on it seems to get slower and slower to find and bring up a new drive when i bring it in. My assumption is that it caches all the drivers for each drive and searches them to see if a matching driver is already installed for that specific device, or something of the nature. I had thought the 2-5 minute wait when plugging in a hard drive was just how W7 operates but apparently this is not the case according to some other tech savvy people i've talked to. Other USB devices such as flash drives don't take nearly as long to come up as a SATA I could clean out so as to get the process back onto a fresh leg.
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Dec 9, 2011
I have Asus N55SF laptop, with Windows 7 SP1 64 bit. Also, I have 2 external hard drives. One with USB 3.0, and one USB 2.0. Following problems, I am going to describe below, happen to the both of them. Just to mention, external drives are tested on desktop computer and following problems do not happen.
Let me now describe what happens when I try certain actions:
- When I try to copy large files (10 or more GB) I get an error that destination is no longer visible. External drives disappear from My Computer and I can't do safe remove. But when I copy files using programs FastCopy or TeraCopy everything copies well and drives do not disappear.
- When I try to do Windows Backup and encrypt them using BitLocker drives also disappear, and are not visible within OS.
There is a difference between external hard with USB 3.0 port and the one with 2.0 port:
- When one with 3.0 disappears after described actions I can't see it from Device Manager, I can see it only after windows reboot. USB 3.0 disk connects to one USB 3.0 port on laptop.
- When one with 2.0 port disappears I can see it from Device Manager, and I only have to unplug it, and plug it in again to see it. USB 2.0 disk connects to 2 USB 2.0 ports on laptop.
Common to both disks is that when then disappear from My computer the diode on the external disk cases are still flashing, what probably means that they have some power. Both disk are formated to NTFS, and Allocation unit size is set to: Default. Their removal policy is set to: Better performance (default). On laptop I only have Windows, Office and Asus drivers. Antivirus is: MSE.
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Apr 16, 2011
I am using 3 external hard drives and noticed a couple of times there drive letters have changed. Maybe I have had them unplugged for some reason I cannot remember, but it causes confusion with some files that use shortcuts. I would like to know if it is possible to give the drives permanent drive letters also change there names?
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Sep 6, 2012
after searching for some answers on the forums, i've been moved to post a separate thread. i have an external hard drive that disappears for some seconds only to reappear again on my list of drives. my computer alerts as if the external drive were dismounting then remounting. i have run various checks and nothing is presenting as abnormal or of issue. has anybody else experience this, what effect is it having on my computer and what can be done about it
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Nov 30, 2012
I have always backed my personal hard drives using images for easy restoration
However i now have 2 PCs that need backup performed and they just want the data so an image is not necessary thus i only want the important data ie; documents and settings important files no junk such as updates or temp files
I would prefer to remove the hard drives and plug it into another pc to perform the backup instead of doing the back up from the actual machine
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Apr 19, 2012
I have a Toshiba Satellite L655-1EM laptop running windows 7 home premium 64bit.OEM came pre-installed. I've had the laptop about 6 months.It works great but I seem to get the BSOD quite a lot. I noticed it only seems to happens when I'm using either of my external hard drives or SD cards. Usually when I am transferring a batch of large files between drives.
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May 11, 2012
how can i make a backup/ system image for my internal and external hard drives at the same time?
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Jun 29, 2012
can u backup your data (or an system image)to an internal and external hard drives at the same time?
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Aug 14, 2011
I use a lot of different usb hard drives in my shop. I have two basic enclosures, a generic one that uses pata drives on a usb 2.0 cable and an Apricon USB SATA 2.0 adapter.Suddenly when I plug in a new drive device manager does see the drive and installs it in device manager. I can see the drive in Disk Management but it has no drive letter assigned, and therefore doesn't show up in Computer. I can easily just assign a letter in Disk Management and the drive immediately becomes usable. However, I would like to get Windows 7 to resume automatically assigning a drive letter.
I have tried a program called USB DriveCleanup. What it appears to have done is remove all installations of prior USB drives and when I plug in a drive that has been in the machine previously it then goes thru the install again. Yet still no drive letter. I think the program is doing what would manually be done by going into safe mode and cleaning out all the entries that build up there that don't appear in normal mode, then removes them. Basically it seems like a shortcut to manually doing it.
I also tried a registry fix that essentially asked me to delete the upper and lower filters. This seems similiar to fix for CD/DVD drives that no longer appear in Computer. This fix also didn't work.I tried removing and reinstalling the chipset drivers. Still no go.Running Windows 7 Pro SP1, H55 chipset.
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Jul 21, 2011
I just finished putting together my computer, installed Windows 7 Pro 64 bits. However, both of my hard drives (one SSD, one regular HDD) are showing up as external drives (plug-and-play). If I click the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon, I could actually "eject" both of my hard drives.
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Oct 30, 2011
my laptop hdd died a few days ago and I've been pulling my hair out trying to install Windows 7 on a brand new HDD i bought.I don't know where else to look for the appropriate drivers. Seagate does not provide any and there are no other drivers on the HP website.I managed to flash the BIOS with a new version just before my old HDD crashed (it was on the fritz so I managed to back up my data on a USB)
- I've also tried the Clean Installation Guide posted here, no difference.
- I've tried formatting it in Disk Management, still no detection.
I've looked at many forum topics here and it points to an SATA non-detection issue?or could it be that I"m installing Windows 7 Ultimate on a VISTA machine and it's not accepting it? I bought this new hdd thinking I could just put it in and install with no fuss but 4+ days later it's a giant headache and I can't return the hdd if I wanted to. There's a pin (primary slave) on the Seagate that was not on the original, but there are no jumper pins, could this be the problem?
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Sep 26, 2012
No partition appear when i install win 7 in my system.
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